The Waddingtons Story - Fighting for Freedom, Fighting for Survival

Fighting for Freedom – Fighting for Survival
The Waddingtons Story

A personal invitation to go behind the scenes. How a Leeds printing company became a legend — working with the Secret Service to help prisoners of war escape, plus winning their own battles against unwanted and aggressive takeover bids that devastated other companies in the industry.

Event Details
Friday 3rd October (11.00am – 3.00pm). RSVP 19 September. Organised by Northern Stationers with an open invitation to all Stationers.

Leeds Discovery Centre (LDC) Tour
A unique museum storage facility which preserves and protects Leeds Museums and Galleries collections of over 1.3 million objects. A private curated viewing of Waddingtons ephemera and The Power of Persuasion – a look at advertising and brands in the collections.

Hospitality
Tea and coffee on arrival. Yorkshire Buffet Lunch.

Guest Speakers - full details below
Dr Henry Irving – An illustrated talk on the history of print in the Second World War and how Waddingtons entered the shadowy world of military intelligence to smuggle escape kits into Prisoner of War camps. Set in the context of the history of mass communication and propaganda in Britain during the Second World War.

John Watson – Personal insights into the defeat of Robert Maxwell the British media proprietor, politician and fraudster. His death on 5 November 1991 shocked the country. Shock turned to anger within weeks when a £460m hole was discovered in the pension funds of his companies - but not Waddingtons.

Price & RSVP
£45.00 per person. RSVP by 19 September. Book early - limited places.

Feeling adventurous? Take the Water Taxi. https://www.leedsdock.com/whos-here/watertaxis/

Granary Wharf (Close by Leeds Station South Entrance) and Leeds Dock (5 minutes’ walk to LDC). £3.00 each way. 15 minutes, every 15 minutes up to 6.00pm.

Travellers by train will be met at Leeds Station at 10.30am. King’s Cross 8.03am - Leeds 10.17am. Return Leeds 3.45pm - King’s Cross 6.00pm.  After booking, Lucie will be in touch to find out if you are making your own way to the Leeds Discovery Centre for 11.00am or if you plan to get the train.

Guest Biographies
Dr Henry Irving. Dr Henry Irving will give an illustrated talk on the history of print in the Second World War. He will explain how the government mobilised commercial techniques to produce all manner of materials before exploring a colourful episode in the history of the Leeds printing firm Waddingtons. He will explain how the firm entered the shadowy world of military intelligence as part of a plan to use board games to smuggle escape kits into Prisoner of War camps.

Henry is a senior lecturer in history at Leeds Beckett University. While completing a PhD on British politics in the 1940s, he became fascinated by the history of mass communication. He has spent most of his subsequent career working on domestic communication and propaganda in Britain during the Second World War. He is joint editor and author of Information at War: A History of the Ministry of Information, 1935-46, which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2026. He has written various articles and chapters on related subjects, ranging from official publications to the history of paper recycling.

Much of Henry’s teaching involves project work with external bodies. He has led many successful student projects with heritage organisations in Leeds. This includes a project on the ‘Leeds Blitz’ with Leeds Museums and Galleries and a recent project on fire watching with The Leeds Library.

John Watson. John joined John Waddington plc as a management trainee in 1970 and became Marketing Director of Waddingtons Games Ltd in 1975. Two years later he became Managing Director of that company. He left Waddingtons Games upon his election as an MP in 1979 but remained on the main Waddingtons Board as a non-executive Director. He was therefore heavily involved in the battles during the early eighties to fight off the two hostile bids from Robert Maxwell. At the time of the 1983 bid he was also Master of the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards. After retiring as a Member of Parliament in 1987 he pursued a subsequent career in industry and finance involving several non-exec appointments.

In the 1980s John Waddington plc was one of the largest companies in Yorkshire. It had over 3,000 employees and was active in many areas of printing, packaging and games. It was widely thought to be a “family” company but was in fact fully quoted on the UK Stock Exchange with no significant family shareholding. Robert Maxwell, then riding high with the British Printing Corporation and the Daily Mirror, noticed the potential availability of Waddingtons and made a hostile bid in June 1983. The company’s shares were priced at 104p in the market. That bid failed but not before he had acquired 30% of the company. He therefore returned with a second bid in 1984. On this occasion he also lost but the battle was extremely close. Maxwell even announced in November 1984 that he now owned 49% of the shares and was confident he could buy the remainder for control “within the next 24 hours”. When Maxwell finally conceded defeat, eighteen months after his first bid, the share were valued at over 500p, having quintupled during the fight. The bid, and the spirited defence from Waddingtons, has recently been regarded as a textbook case of City financial tactics.